Part VII
The grandson of Darth Vader. The words turn over and over in Rey's mind like a casing she might crack if only she can find its point of weakness.
Her knowledge of Darth Vader is sparse at best; limited to overblown tales of a monster in a mask who served the last Emperor and terrorised the galaxy during his reign. Tale shared by old Jakku drunks who may have technically been alive during Vader's time but had surely never seen an honest glimpse of him from their inconsequential backwater planet.
"You're afraid you'll never be as strong as Darth Vader." She'd directed the accusation at another masked monster, having plucked the fear from Kylo Ren's own head. Though even then, she hadn't known what it meant.
"Son of darkness. Heir apparent to Lord Vader." Snoke's words rise to Rey's mind like a ghostly echo. Heir apparent, he'd called Ben. In the midst of battle and torture, she'd thought of it as nothing more than brainwash. But was it?
The rattle of loose armour sends an echo through the tunnel that sets Rey's teeth on edge and brings her thoughts back to the here and now. It feels like they're slowly descending, and in the shifting iridescent light of a glowstick, she studies the soldier before her.
Rey hasn't encountered many stormtroopers in her lifetime, but there's a certain stride to this man's walk that she feels must be ingrained into all of them. A regimented swing to his arms that she's seen echoed by Finn at times - before he catches himself and tries for a more casual saunter.
Much of the wash table gossip relating to dead-enders focused on a secret military base buried in the Ridge that a contingent of stormtroopers had stayed to protect even after the Empire fell. Rey had always fancied the tale about them being the survivors of a Star Destroyer who had been sent out by their officers to secure the crash site and await rescue, only for a landslide to bury the ship. The simple - and far less romanticised - explanation for dead-enders was that they were just scavengers who'd lost their minds, gathered up remnants of Imperial armour and taken to the caves of Carbon Ridge to live out their final days with like-minded crazies.
But as Rey watches this old faded stormtrooper walk, direct his comrades at her rear, and generally display far less crazy than expected… it's apparent these men must have once been true servants of the Empire; that somehow, the wash table stories of a stranded army must have held some truth.
"Do you have a name?" The question flies out louder than Rey intended, causing fragments of her words to ricochet off the tunnel walls as if racing ahead of them. The butt of a blaster jabs against her back; a wordless demand for silence that she temporarily considers rebelling against before grudgingly holding her tongue.
But the unanswered question opens a new box of curiosities within her mind. If these people really been here since the fall of the Empire, how have they survived? Is there actual truth to the rumours of a secret research base? Or were simply a bunch of abandoned soldiers left to wait for a rescue that would never come?
A twinge of sadness plucks at Rey's mind with that thought. An aching pull of familiarity. Tentatively, she gathers the Force to her and tries to glean some kind of reading as to who they are, and what they intend to do with her. A mild vibration fills her body as she channels the energy, pushing it towards the trooper in front of her as if she can somehow compel it to physically penetrate the brittle armour helmet, the skin, the skull… And then tap into the thoughts inside his head.
Her efforts fall flat. The Force skitters away from her as if seeking an escape. She doesn't know the first thing about probing someone's mind. It's like she's holding the end of an invisible antenna, but with no idea of how to direct it.
"We're here."
The group halt before a section of tunnel that looks no different from any other until the leader steps to the right hand wall and the wavering glowlight reveals the subtle outline of a door cut into the carbonite rock. Rey blinks at the revelation, and in that moment misses the mechanism the trooper uses to activate the door. It slides open with a pneumatic hiss, revealing a room that looks like the airlock chamber of an Imperial star destroyer. A description specific to her mind, given how often she's climbed through the wreckage of both the Ravager and the Inflictor in the past.
She hesitates as the stormtrooper steps back. "Where is here, exactly?"
There it is, the blaster butting the base of her spine again. Stumbling over the threshold, Rey spins around with the intention of grabbing the damn weapon and shoving it up -
The door hisses closed. Leaving Rey in the chamber, and the stormtroopers on the other side.
Ksssssk. It's a subtle sound - once again at her back. Whirling, Rey finds herself facing yet another opened door. And yet another stormtrooper striding through it, to stop before her.
"Let me guess," she begins before the white armour-clad figure can speak, "you're my new tour guide."
"This way," the modulated voice is deep and utterly deadpan as the trooper motions her to move ahead.
"Well, wherever we're going, I hope you're planning to feed me," shrugging away the black-gloved hand that reaches for her arm, she moves towards the end of the chamber, where a new corridor awaits behind a blast door.
Any doubt of Carbon Ridge holding a secret Imperial base within its sharp-peaked mountain range is blown aside as Rey travels deeper into what is clearly a man-made structure. With its sleek grey durasteel interior made up of straight lines, curved corners and a dim iridescent light that suggests power is running at half, Rey feels a sense of familiarity to the design as memories come to mind of countless hours spent wandering through Star Destroyer wreckage.
But while the long corridor holds many doors on either side, and each door is clearly related to Star Destroyer aesthetic, there's a difference to the layout that puts her more in mind of a military station than a starcruiser.
"How has this remained a secret for so long?" she muses aloud, "the entrance was a no-brainer to find."
The stormtrooper at her back holds his silence, though she's relieved that he chooses not to use his blaster for communication, at least.
"How many of you are there? I never saw more than a dozen or so dead-enders rattling around the Ridge when I used to venture up here. Are they just the guards? Are there many more inside? What is this place, anyway?"
Still refusing to engage? Rey shakes her head. This one has the patience of a saint. "You know you can't hold me here, right? I can escape from anything."
She stops suddenly, forcing the trooper to sidestep to avoid collision. Swinging around to face him, she steels herself and sucks in a centering breath. "If Ben Solo is here, you will take me to him."
For a long moment, she feels a presence staring out at her from behind the helmet's visor, but the brittle white armouring may as well be empty, for all the reaction its host makes to her request.
"Okay then," she swallows hard and tries again, "take me to Kylo Ren."
The helmet tilts to one side as if seeking to process her request. But the soldier makes no effort to comply. Rey purses her lips and gives it one last shot, "take me to the grandson of Darth Vader!"
The trooper's left hand twitches at his side while his right flexes upon his blaster. "Follow me."
Finally! Rey blinks, surprised at her success as the soldier strides ahead of her. But the feeling is short-lived when the modulated voice drifts back, "taking you to the grandson of Darth Vader is precisely what I have orders to do."
"Wait here."
Stopping at a door, the trooper activates its opening mechanism and motions for Rey to enter the adjoining room.
Glancing to the stark grey cell that awaits her, she hesitates. "You said you'd bring me to Vader's grandson."
"And I will," waving her in once more, the stormtrooper waits for her to comply.
Let's see if he really does have the patience of a saint, Rey thinks as she crosses her arms and stays obstinately rooted in the corridor.
"I don't see anyone else in there."
"You will," he says in a clipped manner, "once you enter."
So he is human, she chuckles inwardly as a note of exasperation bleeds through the stormtrooper's modulated voice. The fact that his hand is tightening on his blaster doesn't escape Rey's attention. Nor does the fact that she's stuck in a secret underground facility with a stormtrooper impervious to Force-persuasion and clearly running out of good will.
Perhaps she can't escape from anywhere, afterall.
"Fine," she says tersely, and seeing no better alternative, she steps into the cell.
The door shuts behind her with a pneumatic hiss. Not bothering to look over her shoulder, Rey steps towards the single cot bed with its grey Imperial-issue blanket neatly tucked around the thin mattress, and turns to sit upon it.
A movement from the doorway catches her eye, and she looks up in startelement as the stormtrooper - now in the closed cell with her - steps into the center of the room.
"Wh-" Leaping to her feet, Rey's right hand slides to the staff at her back; grateful the dead-enders never bothered with confiscating it. "Why are you still here? Am I being interrogated now?"
"Something like that," the stormtrooper replies, stepping closer as he lifts his hands to his helmet. Pulling it free of his head, he drops it to the floor as Rey's eyes widen in shock at his sudden revelation.
"Rey," closing the gap between them, Kylo stops just short of reaching to her, "what are you doing here? And do you have any idea how hard it's going to be for me to get you out of this mess?"
Chapter Endnote: Not sure if anyone is still reading this, so I won't apologise for the lack of Kylo in this chapter. I mean, technically he was present for half of it... :p I'm working on the next chapter already, though also bouncing around a couple of other fics, so if anyone would like to see another chapter update soon, I may have it ready over the next week. Hope someone out there is looking forward to seeing how the Kylo and Rey tension plays out face to face! (Okay, I just read back on that chapter note and realised it's one big barrel of fishing-for-feedback but... Meh, I won't apologise for that either. Feedback is nice sometimes. :/ )